Volume XI of 'Races of Avendar'

                              THE CHAJA
                  by Ehari Doveresa, Herald of Rebellion

The chaja are a people that have had their history stolen from them. Whatever they were in antiquity, generations of enslavement by the shuddeni have systematically erased any awareness of their past. To this day, the shuddeni still enslave a significant proportion of the chaja population, using them as labourers, bodyguards, servants, and gladiators, at least in their own underground cities.

While the shuddeni claim otherwise, enslaved chaja brought to the surface frequently escape and are rarely recaptured. Those confined underground too often slip their oppressors' watch and vanish into the tunnels. These often linger nearby despite the danger, helping others escape, smuggling them and their families to the surface. Few other of the major races are truly aware of the depth of the plight of the chaja, making them a people largely forced to save themselves.

On the surface, the chaja disapora spreads across the continent; they forge communities in large cities and form local cultures based around the lives they forge for themselves. At best they are seen by others as similar to the alatharya: good at heavy lifting and breaking heads, but not much else. Seeds of resentment toward these daily, banal cruelties have spread deep roots through their communities. A sense of self-reliance and wariness toward outsiders is common in such enclaves.

While human-devised metrics of gauging intelligence deem the chaja somewhat dim, few other peoples have been so forced to carve out a place for themselves in societies that do not wish to yield it.

Chaja range between six and eight feet tall, with pale, greyish skin that tans under sunlight. While most have milk-white eyes, chaja whose families have spent multiple generations on the surface have adapted somewhat, and might be any colour, albeit pale. Their hair is slick and oily, ranging from white to black. On the surface many dye their hair vividly, in defiance of their colourless underground life. Their bodies are muscular and quick, but they have no capacity for magic now, if they ever did.

Many chaja have a deep, virulent hatred of shuddeni; the most extremist of those often find their way to Kor Thrandir, who share similar sentiments.

There are some who have been so thoroughly brutalized by the shuddeni that they do not consider escape; they may serve loyally for all their lives and even resent those who leave this life behind. These exist in a cruelly- constructed state of learned helplessness, conditioned by the shuddeni to participate in their own oppression. Few such will realize this is the case, but the myth of the freed chaja returning to the 'safety' of their master is largely that, spread by shuddeni themselves amongst the chaja population.